Dr Ashley Bloomfield saying he was wrong to accept free tickets to the final game of the Twenty20 cricket series shouldn't stop the Black Caps and the New Zealand Olympic team moving up the Covid-19 vaccination queue.
There was some mean-spirited glee over Dr Bloomfield's embarrassment.
But please let'snot see that as an excuse for the Government to bail out on what should be a given - vaccines in the very near future for two groups of sportspeople who will bring huge pleasure to the massive number of New Zealanders whose spirits have been lifted over the year of the pandemic by watching live sport.
Discussing the issue on Newstalk ZB just after the Bloomfield story broke, opposition to the Black Caps and the Olympians getting vaccines quickly developed into two main arguments. I strongly disagree with both.
First, if the sportspeople jump the queue, no, it doesn't mean that Nana and Poppa will die.
The first wave of vaccines, the government says, will involve border workers and their families. So far 18,000 have had the first of two injections. Up next will be 57,000 frontline healthcare workers and then 183,000 people in healthcare, who could expose vulnerable patients. So there are 240,000 people to be vaccinated before the elderly start to get the shots.
How much delay would adding 25 cricket players and staff and 350 Olympians to the programme bring? The answer, to the fair minded, is surely two-fifths of not enough to make a blind bit of difference.
Secondly, giving vaccines to these particular sports teams will not set a precedent that will see tiddlywinks or cheese rolling squads wanting to go overseas being able to muscle their way to the front of the injection line.
Valerie Adams at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Photo / Photosport
Yes, a standard of a kind will be set, but, if there's criticism of that, keep in mind that the bar will have been raised to a level so high by the Black Caps and the Olympians, there's almost no side that could ride on their coattails.
The Olympics are the pinnacle of world sport, and the Black Caps are playing in the final of a test cricket world championship.
I love the humour of gumboot throwing, but good luck trying to bludge a quick vaccine by saying you should be compared to Kane Williamson and his men because you can hurl a Skellerup Red Band a long way.
Given that discussions on Covid-19 are always politically supercharged, there's no need for the Government to feel twitchy about backlash if they okay the sports vaccines.
Whining about sport being helped too much by politicians will always be part of our social fabric. But there's a much bigger group who just love the excitement of sport.
Look at the America's Cup. Going right back to 1995, when New Zealand won the Cup for the first time, there was a small but noisy group of Kiwis who reckoned it was obscene that taxpayer money should be helping a rich man's sport.
Then think about scenes in the recent TVNZ documentary "Black Magic" that showed Queen St awash with a crowd so big it dwarfed the Santa parade. Yes Virginia, that's right, the America's Cup was more popular than Santa Claus. Call me cynical about political motivations, and you'd be right. But if there's one area where the silent majority find their voice, it's sport, and the golden word for every politician I've ever known is "majority".
Obviously, having reported on, and loved, sport for most of my adult life, I've got an axe to grind.
So let's finish with the thoughts of one of the greatest statesmen of all time, the late Nelson Mandela, on what he believed sport can offer all of us.
In May, 2000 Mandela said: "Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair."
Our great sportspeople have the chance, playing test cricket in England with India, and in Tokyo at the Olympics, to bring us hope and joy.
So it's time to stop pussyfooting around, to ignore the whiners and bleaters, and just give them the damn jabs.
